Radiant Plant
What sets the wealthy diet apart from common food is the use of radiant energy. Centuries ago, brilliant alchemists and necromancers discovered ways to infuse electroplasmic energy into the living matrices of plants, creating beautiful living artwork that glowed with energy. The practices expanded to working with animals—first fish, then eels, devilfish, and other sea creatures. The practice is traditionally unsuccessful with mammals, and iffy at best with birds.
The glow of life energy emanating from radiant creatures is soaked up by surrounding plant life, which grows bigger and faster as a result. The wealthy tend to cultivate radiant gardens not just for the range of beautiful plants, but also because the light from those plants replaces sunlight and allows other plants nearby to flower and bear fruit. The light is dimmer, but always glowing.
Critics of the process suggest the secrets to infusing radiant energy were learned from leviathans and are therefore not to be trusted. The practice is widespread regardless of its origin, and commonly accepted.
Many wealthy families have their own secrets for radiant integration, and so there is a wide variety of techniques and appearances among radiant plants and animals.
The Brochalla family have planted small radiant trees in rows with grapevines, creating an otherwise impossible vineyard. The Nyamaska family pioneered the technique of building an aquarium full of radiant fish that arched over a greenhouse. The living light allows growing gardens of fresh fruit and vegetables inside the mansion’s security. The Durovlins have ponds full of radiant fish and plants. They harvest clams and mussels (and their weirdly shiny pearls) as well as other cultivated undersea delicacies from the glowing grottos.
Aristocrats and scholars can wax poetic about how the condensation of life energy in the electroplasm represents the doorway between life and death, condensation from the Ghost Field in a living thing. Food, too, is a doorway between life and death. One thing must consume another to live, and to interrupt that endless cycle brings death. From that death, fungal life may then spring up and begin the cycle anew.
Enjoy the radiant plants and animals, but do not eat them. Radiant poisoning is serious. The life energy that a person eats tends to root around in their echo and wake up a voice or personality of someone they killed, or a death they witnessed, or (for innocents) invites in the strongest nearby ghost voice. A psychic civil war ensues, and a Whisper must be hired to smooth out the unwanted voice and free the poisoned individual to be singular in the body once more. This usually works, but often has unpleasant side effects.
Radiant plants and animals must be disposed of by burning, as a human corpse would be, or their electroplasmic energy can cause problems in the Ghost Field. Since they almost never occur in the wild, this restriction on raising radiant plants and animals is generally not a problem. [1]: 247
In Barrowcleft, the wondrous power of radiant energy allows crops to grow in the darkness of Duskwall. Life in the city depends upon these farms, so their delicate radiant plants and irrigation systems are watched constantly by specially appointed deputies of the Watch. [1]: 256
[1] Harper, J., Acimovic, S., Nitter, S., Arden, V., Figueroa, D., Green, D., Nittner, D., & Shields, A. (2017). Blades in the Dark (v8.2). Evil Hat Productions.
Critics of the process suggest the secrets to infusing radiant energy were learned from leviathans and are therefore not to be trusted. The practice is widespread regardless of its origin, and commonly accepted.
Many wealthy families have their own secrets for radiant integration, and so there is a wide variety of techniques and appearances among radiant plants and animals.
The Brochalla family have planted small radiant trees in rows with grapevines, creating an otherwise impossible vineyard. The Nyamaska family pioneered the technique of building an aquarium full of radiant fish that arched over a greenhouse. The living light allows growing gardens of fresh fruit and vegetables inside the mansion’s security. The Durovlins have ponds full of radiant fish and plants. They harvest clams and mussels (and their weirdly shiny pearls) as well as other cultivated undersea delicacies from the glowing grottos.
Aristocrats and scholars can wax poetic about how the condensation of life energy in the electroplasm represents the doorway between life and death, condensation from the Ghost Field in a living thing. Food, too, is a doorway between life and death. One thing must consume another to live, and to interrupt that endless cycle brings death. From that death, fungal life may then spring up and begin the cycle anew.
Enjoy the radiant plants and animals, but do not eat them. Radiant poisoning is serious. The life energy that a person eats tends to root around in their echo and wake up a voice or personality of someone they killed, or a death they witnessed, or (for innocents) invites in the strongest nearby ghost voice. A psychic civil war ensues, and a Whisper must be hired to smooth out the unwanted voice and free the poisoned individual to be singular in the body once more. This usually works, but often has unpleasant side effects.
Radiant plants and animals must be disposed of by burning, as a human corpse would be, or their electroplasmic energy can cause problems in the Ghost Field. Since they almost never occur in the wild, this restriction on raising radiant plants and animals is generally not a problem. [1]: 247
In Barrowcleft, the wondrous power of radiant energy allows crops to grow in the darkness of Duskwall. Life in the city depends upon these farms, so their delicate radiant plants and irrigation systems are watched constantly by specially appointed deputies of the Watch. [1]: 256
[1] Harper, J., Acimovic, S., Nitter, S., Arden, V., Figueroa, D., Green, D., Nittner, D., & Shields, A. (2017). Blades in the Dark (v8.2). Evil Hat Productions.
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